A Day We Were All Attacked
by A Libertarian Way back to an event, I will take you. This was an event that changed the lives of some and plain ended the lives of others. It was an event that made comedians quiet and politicians cry. September 11 2001 was a day that will live in the hearts and minds of all that witnessed the tragedy that brought the greatest country in the world to its knees. It was an event that united all; from the self-actualized masses to the ideological collectives. The destruction of the two great structures along with the scaring of another was a form of barbarianism that should have died with Attila the Hun. But, there was another tragedy that day. The event that day awakened a new self in almost all of us. Like a sleeping dragon in our hearts now awakened, our grief, anger, sympathy, and depression sprang to life and took control. We cried for the dead, grieved with the loved ones, and swore we would make things right. We donated blood and money while trying to find the enemy that must be brought to justice. Our great nation, in the blink of an eye, jumped to its feet and acted. The story is a truly sad story for another reason: there was more than one act of barbarianism. We were the second. We unified together in anger at an evil enemy. We rallied behind the stars and bars as it worked to get revenge. All of us, from the hippies to the soccer moms, wanted to make the evil ones pay. This is where the story made its tragic climax. A nation of thinkers, a democratic nation guided by its free people, lost the meaning of democracy while proclaiming its greatness. This nation became a slave to emotion. The anger and sorrow in the hearts of the masses translated into domestic and foreign policy. Television and radio changed. No longer doing the job of informing us emotionless information; it now became a medium through which we all felt the same grief and anger. Leno didn’t make us laugh along with O’ Brian and Letterman. Seriousness was in the air and all around us. It covered us like ash from a volcano as it poured out of our three boxes: computer, television, and radio. Rationalism was traitorous talk. If you don’t believe me then ask yourself this question and give yourself an objective response: “Would I have asked why they attacked or if it was, in fact, justified?” or “would I have gladly gone out into the populace and proclaimed the message of peace and non-military action?”. Peace, non-intervention, and thinking were the actions of the disloyal. Rationalism was a sin tied to the terrorist acts themselves. Looking at the event and its horrors in relation to other similar crises was unheard of. Not a single person I saw said “well, this is no big deal. There was an earth quake in (insert third world country) that killed ten times as many people”. Let us look back at our own individual responses. I want you now to see yourself on that warm fall/summer day. The day when uncertainty was felt by all. Think of your response. What was your solution. Don’t think of the self you wish you were, but the self you actually were. The self that hurts you to think of. The self that wanted blood. I will tell you about myself. I heard about the event all through the day. I didn’t see the actual footage until around 3:00 PM. I said a phrase that would have boiled your blood: “Ha, Sucks to be them”. I don’t regret that phrase now, I didn’t regret it then, and I will never regret it. Why did I say it? Is it that I am evil? No. I said it because, at my heart, I am rational. I said it because I saw the event as it truly was. It was the death of three thousand people and the destruction of valuable real estate. I didn’t mean to be heartless, I meant to force myself back to rationality. It was a minor event in the scheme of things. Over thirty million people (maybe more) died horrific deaths in the Great Leap Forward in China, yet no one here cares; Many millions died in Rwanda, people only cared once a film came out, but then Gay marriage and global warming were more important; the Keymer Rouge slaughtered around 2 million Cambodians in the early seventies, yet making Nixon pay for Allegedly spying on the democrats was a bigger deal and more important than letting him stop the mass executions in the most brutal, for its size, genocide ever. If one thousand more people died when the offices came tumbling down then that event would equal the average daily rate of abortion in this country (the only difference is that the people in the towers were mourned and buried in coffins wile the unfortunate children were thrown in the garbage and forgotten by all). If you want a piece of psychology, here it is: people only care about those that they can relate to. We only cared about the people in the towers because they were just like us: common Americans. We don’t care about the unborn. We see the Africans as animals and their genocide as ethnic cleansing (i.e. natural selection). We see the Cambodian massacre and killing fields as a minor conflict in someone else’s yard. We are driven by emotion and this one event, on 9/11/2001 was the trigger of the greatest emotional explosion ever. It was kind of like scaring a person off a cliff: it was our emotional reaction that amplified the event and brought about our over reaction which lead to over 100,000 dead civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. What am I getting at? Could it be that I am the enemy? Are my words against everyone’s response unpatriotic? Or heretic? Am I just as bad as the terrorists themselves? If I am a terrorist for what I say and the enemy of this great land for my devotion to all life and rationalism then I say one thing : good, I hate this country in its current state; being driven by emotion. Patriots out there, I ask you one question: are you rational? __NOEDITSECTION__ Category: Opinions Category: Opinions by User A Libertarian Category: October 6, 2007 Category: October 2007 Category: Politics Opinions Category: Morality Opinions Category: Iraq Opinions Category: War Opinions From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki. From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki.